 Anna Whitelaw takes a ringside seat for the great Northside vs. Southside title fight.
It’s a chilly Saturday night, and a crowd of sweat-drenched, 20-something hipsters in skinny jeans are milling about an alleyway behind a strip club in the city, smoking and sitting in the gutter before descending down the tiled steps into the dingy basement below.
Inside, the DJs are playing an eclectic mix of everything from Daft Punk and New Order to Blondie and MIA. You won’t hear a single house track or chart-topper; and there isn’t a blonde, bronzed boy in a tight fluro t-shirt in sight.
Among the people present is a bearded, 25-year-old student, Ben, who lives in Collingwood, and who rarely ventures south to Commercial Road.
“I just don’t like those venues,” he tells MCV. “I can’t stand the music, because it’s crass and derivative, and so 90s; and I’m just not interested in guys who wear Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirts and Calvin Klein underwear.”
“It’s more than just geography or convenience,” Ben says of the yawning Northside-Southside chasm which separates Melbourne’s gay ghettos.
“It’s not just about aesthetics and the clothes you wear. It’s about different sensibilities, and choices about how you live your life. On the Northside, the sensibility is less commercial and less mainstream, and more interested in supporting independent and live music, art and fashion; more politically and culturally aware.”
Another Northsider adds their five cents to the debate.
“When I go out on the Southside, it seems like every guy I meet is a hairdresser [or] works in retail or marketing or fashion, and I just can’t have a conversation with them. They all seem to be clones of each other, who wear too much fake tan and brand name clothes, and are obsessed with their image. It’s hard to meet someone down-to-earth, genuine and unaffected in that scene.”
This dislike cuts both ways. The following night, on the other side of town, a crowd of teenage and 20-something gay guys, all of them clean-cut, are queuing around the block to get into Love Machine.
Here, we find 24-year-old sales executive Alex, who lives in Prahran.
“I barely ever go to that side of town. I just don’t have any reason to, since my friends live around here. When I do, I just don’t fit in,” he says.
Katie, a 24-year-old dancer, feels the same way.
“If I go to Fitzroy to see a band play, or to Collingwood, I feel like I’m out of place; like I’m being judged for being too ‘straight’ looking or not cool enough, because I’m wearing make-up, don’t wear my hair short and haven’t bought my clothes from an op-shop,” she opines.
As another Southsider puts it: “Northsiders just seem to sit around wearing smoking pot, eating lentils, listening to grungy depressing music, and complaining about everything.”
The comments of this diverse collection of Melburnians illustrate the broad differences existing within the gay scene; and the broader cultural differences between the Northside’s student-populated, inner city suburbs like Fitzroy, Collingwood, Brunswick and Northcote; and their more affluent Southside counterparts: South Yarra, Prahran and St Kilda.
The Yarra River separates the Northside and Southside like a liquid Berlin Wall. And it seems that not only do people rarely cross the Yarra to mingle; there is a perception that we don’t even mix. When Hares & Hyenas Bookshop moved from Prahran to Fitzroy, for example, some people accused its owners of switching sides, although the shop’s management maintain the decision was motivated by higher rents forcing them out of Commercial Road.
But is Melbourne’s gay and lesbian culture war real, or is it mostly in our heads?
While there are tangible differences between the two sides of the river – the gay scene on the Northside revolves less around clubs, and on the Southside tends to be more inclusive and less segregated - there is a tendency to exaggerate the differences and ignore the similarities. Back in the glory days of Q + A, before the weekly Thursday night party closed and was replaced by the more generic ‘IQ’, the Northside’s gay culture offered something genuinely different; but as the inner north becomes more gentrified, it’s also becoming more homogenous.
“The Northside isn’t what it used to be,” Ben admits.
Meanwhile, despite the misconceptions, the Southside has its own burgeoning lesbian community.
“There isn’t just one gay culture, there are many. Things change and evolve, and as one scene comes to an end, something new is popping up somewhere else. People place far too much emphasis on where you live or hang out, and they love to generalise and pigeon-hole,” explains one former Northsider, who now lives in Richmond.
“I’ve lived on both sides of the river, and I’ve got friends scattered all over the place; and I appreciate the different things they have to offer. It’s a bit of a beat up really, kind of like the whole Melbourne-Sydney rivalry.”
Now, that’s a whole other story!
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Taking sides
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